I’ve read most of Chris Bohjalian’s other books so when I saw his newest on the shelf I dove right in.
Oops.
While some of his others were nightmare inducing for other reasons they didn’t involve seeing dead people, and contemplating killing your own children, not to mention and the extra chill inducing ending.
Please read something by Bohjalian… just maybe not this one.
Would I recommend it? No, well written, but just no.
Just in case you missed it I’d like you to know that Ivy loves pink.
In case she wasn’t the one to tell you that I”ll just quick clarify that her favorites are dark pink and dark purple, she wouldn’t want you to be confused about that.
She also loves, horses, fairy’s and princesses.
Ivy is my daughter who goes to pick pumpkins in an outfit like this:
I love the girl but some days most days the girly girl stuff completely baffles me. (Skirts in November? Why Ivy, why?)
Then there is my bug lover Clara.
She also loves dogs, shopping and her “pink blanket” which is green.
Clara is baffling for other reasons. (Shopping?!? Real shopping and pretend?)
Love of shopping aside I must say that it warmed this mothers heart more than reasonable when Clara and I were looking at a book together and she said:
“Me wike boo Mom.”
After four years of all pink all the time, I think I’m ready to add a bit of blue!
It appears I read the first book in this series before I started writing about the books I was reading, which is annoying to me, and possibly to you to. Or maybe it’s just a bit of my need-to-have-some-part-of-my-life-in-order-so-I-choose-odd-small-things issue coming though and no one is annoyed other than me.
Regardless of who is or is not annoyed by this out of order book review I’ll attempt to put my own issues aside and carry on.
The Magicians by Lev Grossman was a recommendation from Pat Rothfuss’s blog. And since we should all have read at least The Name of The Wind by now we know he is a super author, and we should probably at least check out his recommendations right?
Right.
If you would like to do so yourself here is his link http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2009/08/things-i-like-magicians-and-faeries-of/
Personally I’d call The Magicians something of a Harry Potter meets Narnia in an adult sort of way.
(And by that oh best beloved I mean we’ve added, sarcasm, sex, drugs, alcohol, death and other assorted nasties)
I recall it being a fairly wonderful, if slightly startling book, so therefore I found the second in the series (see large title above) and brought it home. I then proceeded to read this book in a much shorter time frame than I should have which resulted in a much shorter night sleep than was really prudent.
And it was worth it.
Would I recommend it? Why yes, yes I would, thanks for asking.
And on a slightly different but still sort of related subject I feel compelled to share this flow chart of NPR’s top 100 science fiction and fantasy books (also recommended by Pat Rothfuss) because it’s funny if you’ve read enough of them to be dorky enough to get the jokes and possibly helpful in finding a new book to read if you haven’t.
I was thinking about the cat today and how she’s really rather unappreciated in my blogging world. I double checked and discovered that there are five tags on posts with “cats” and 41 for “dogs”. It just so happens that I took this picture of her the other day so I thought it would be a great opportunity to share a little Fiona story.
That’s when I came to the realization that she’s not under appreciated.
She’s just boring.
In addition to boring she is also frighteningly outperformed in her cat duties by one large Great Dane.
Cat duty: Spend the day sleeping in the sun in an inconvenient place.
Fiona – check
Piper -Sleeps in an inconvenient place but takes up 20 times more room and when you oust her from that place sighs loudly and often farts in your general direction as she moves off.
Cat duty: Kills rodents or other small animals.
Fiona – Doesn’t know what to do with a mouse when given to her on a silver platter.
I know I’ve tried.
Piper- Kills rats with relish. Also death on possum, skunk and other small creatures that invade her kingdom.
Cat duty: Being a general cuddly animal.
Fiona – Waits until you are almost settled in your chair/bed/what have you and then sits on you. If you attempt to remove her she will somehow sink her freakishly sharp back claws into you on her way off.
Piper – Such a good cuddler that I actually kicked John out of bed late in pregnancy with Ivy in favor of Pipers back warming skills.
Fiona also is worse about stealing food off the table and pukes in the house more than Piper does.
To top it off I prefer blogging with pictures, while Fiona is a beautiful cat her coloring makes taking a good picture of her very difficult. This is exacerbated by the fact that she is a cat so immediately looks annoyed and haughty while turning her head away from me while I try.
I’m no longer confused about why the dog posts have outnumbered the cats.
Last night Clara’s toy of the moment was an old beanie baby style stuffed teddy bear. The bear has seen better days part of an ear has been mostly chewed off by Storm, it’s got the distinctive slobber crusted fur of an animal that’s been loved by Piper and Clara has gotten into the unappealing habit of sucking on one of it’s paws.
But looks aside, Clara loves her Teddy.
(Pretend there is a nice cute picture of Clara holding her Teddy here because that is really what this post should have. While you are at it pretend I’m a computer whiz and am not still arguing with my computers.)
Last night I listened to her talking to her Teddy, it went a little something like this:
“Oh Teddy!!!” Translation: Oh Teddy I’m so happy to see you!
“Oh Teddy.” Translation: Yes I love you too.
“Oh Teddy?” Translation: Are you cold?
“Oh Teddy.” Translation: Here I have snuggled you under blankets is that should be much better.
“Oh Teddy!” Translation: Come on out and play!
“Oh Teddy.” Translation: I love you.
At least I’m pretty sure that’s what she was saying!
This last weekend the family gathered in Pewaukee for an “Early 2011 Holiday Meal” with Granny and Gramps before they head down to Florida. I brought a ham for dinner, my Mom made twice baked potatoes, John brought the wine, and Tyler showed up with this:
Someone should probably explain to Tyler what is and is not acceptable as a hostess gift.
After taking lots of pictures,Tyler graciously gave this deer to John and I. Since this is Tyler’s second deer of the year, and we are out of venison we happily accepted his offer. The deer was well photographed, hung in the garage and we all went and had our “Early 2011 Holiday Meal” The food was delicious, the company was not bad (considering we were all related) and soon it was time for the fun to be over and the girls to head to bed.
That’s when Tyler got a look that was a little like this:
Suddenly at 9:30 on a Saturday night after eating far too much delicious food I found myself sitting at my parents kitchen counter butchering a deer while listening to a conversation about how the family isn’t crazy we just are more interesting, or fun, or something that was attempting to justify the fact that we were spending our night putting meat into little white packages. All the while John is pulling out knives and grinders he is yelling that we made him crazy, claiming that he used to be perfectly happy watching movies or playing cards and that our family had ruined him.
I’m not sure if we are crazy or just know how to have a good time, but it was a memorable night full of laughter and I’ve got freezer full of venison again.
Can’t complain about any of that!
A Friday ritual . A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week.
A simple, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
You can’t live with ’em and you just can’t shoot ’em.
Or maybe that was men.
Either way I’m still hating computers… except for when I love them.
Or maybe that is men?
Right now I sort of hate them.
Computers.
Not men, or really man, before I get myself in trouble with John.
John is good.
Love him.
Hate the computers.
Now that we’ve got that straight…
Our regular computer died.
Again.
Again it seems to be a terminal issue.
I’m thinking of shooting it but I can’t get Trip interested enough to point it.
We do have a backup computer now, which is great and I love.
Except for when I hate it.
The problem is the back up computer is old.
It has four USB ports.
I have 76 things that would like a USB port.
One of them is my cameras card reader.
But even if I mange to get that into a port it completely freaks out the computer.
As in constant beeping while the mouse cursor jiggles it’s way across the screen full scale computer freak out.
Why a computer would do that is beyond me, maybe Trip would point this one…
But then I would be cut off from the internet and I’d have to go cry and we don’t want that.
In the meantime I think I’ll go make a wish on an empty Diet Coke can.
I hear that’s what you do when you are out of Diet Coke on a rainy day and you desperately need the Diet Coke fairy to come deliver a fresh one.
I think I’ll look for an empty Milky Way bar wrapper while I’m at it…
Apparently I’ve turned into a scatter brained mother.
I’m blaming it on my kids.
It’s the only explanation I can come up with. I never used to have a focusing problem, well except when I was supposed to be writing a paper or studying for some giant test and would instead decide that I HAD to clean my room first. But that wasn’t a focus problem, more like an evasion technique. I very much enjoy having time to work on one project and keep working on it until it is done. It is one of the things I MISS in my life since having children. I used to eat meals hours late just so I could finish up what I was doing and check another job of the list. So explain to me this morning…
This morning I am blissfully alone, John is out sitting in a tree with a friend and the girls are at their grandparents. I got to sleep in, although just to what time I got to sleep in is hard to say what with Daylight Savings Time messing with life again, but that’s a whole different story.Then I decided I should make some sweet potato muffins for breakfast so that there would be some to share when John and his friend finally get blown out of their trees and until they got here I would work on one of my Christmas presents I’m making.
So I…
-checked the computer and found it was stalled out
-restarted the computer
-started water for tea
-started fire
-checked on computer
-preheated oven
-made tea
-checked fire
-did outside chores
-ate leftovers for breakfast while checking e-mail
-remembered the muffins and the preheated oven
-got half the ingredients ready
-realized I hadn’t fed the dogs
-fed the dogs
-let the dogs out
-washed three dishes
-continued making the muffins
-let Piper back in
-put the muffins in a tin without little paper liners, (why I do not know, I love paper liners, muffins should always have paper liners)
-washed three more dishes
-remembered the project
-sat down on the computer to look up directions
-wrote a blog about how I can’t focus
So back to the children, here is my theory. After multiple years of being unable to focus on any one thing for more than three minutes without hearing; “MOM,” unidentified screaming, or “Guess What?” I think it’s now just become habit that I must completely change direction in what I am doing every few minutes whether I need to or not.
Good thing we are picking the girls up tonight so tomorrow morning when it takes me 2 hours to make breakfast I’ve got a good excuse.
Now what was I going to do?
A book whose characters ranged from despicable to annoying. 
Would I recommend it? No. You know it’s bad when the murder mystery is finally solved and you no longer care.
Behind the Willows 
